I just bought an Otari MTR-10 r2r deck. This makes three decks in total. Two Otari MX-5050 ii 2 and now the MTR. Does anyone else suffer with this disease? I've gone from zero to this in a short period of time. Is there a cure or am I hopelessly terminal with it? I could use another MTR for spare parts.............uh-oh it's getting worse.

Falconer- Yep, you need a program to break this cycle....I wish I still had a good R2R but the price of tape is way too high for me to seriously consider it. Please post some photos of the decks, still think tape sounds way better than pro-tools. Happy listening, Chris.

Well.......I know, I know....knowing you have a problem is the first step in recovery. Last Friday I bought an Otari MTR-12. Slight difference between it and the MTR-10 purchased earlier, but primarily the same inners. Parts are interchangeable between the two units. One difference in the two decks is that the MTR-12 will take 12-1/2" reels where the MTR-10 will not go that large.

I did receive the tape last week. I listen to it briefly before I had to stop and take care of honey do things. It seem the be heavy on one channel. I put another tape on thinking maybe something happened to one channel on the deck but the deck was ok. I'll be getting the tape back out again sometime this week when I know I can spend more than 10 minutes listening. What little I heard sounded great, I'm not positive but I believe that I saw bow rosin falling from the speaker. Oh...and I did pick up another MTR-12 last week as well. That's what has kept me from having listening time, giving it a good going over. A studio over in Atlanta is closing it's doors. I went over and got the deck last Thursday. They had two MTR-12s, I picked the one that showed the least wear on the heads and lifters. They also have some MTR-10s that they will be listing on ebay.

Wow - it definitely sounds like you're having fun!These are all recorded with 2 mics with no equilization so the channels will often not be at the same level on your meters... but you should hear right into the recording space, with the 2 instruments in their place. The violin is closer to the left channel & cello will be closer to centre right...

The 1st track, Handel Passacaglia is a wonderful duo & it was recorded in 1 take... amazing talents.... Enjoy!

Yes, still here. I believe the MTR went to a different home, have not heard anything back from the seller. A slight depression has set in but I should be able to recover with some professional counseling.

With the OTR10 and 12 machines, there is plenty of room for isolated RCA jacks to be installed only inches away from the playback head. You can use a ZP3 with the Tape Option and plug the heads directly into it with a good shielded RCA terminated microphone cable.

The cards on the front of the machine for the left and right channel can simply be pulled out a few inches to disconnect them when you are using the tube playback electronics.

This setup, even with the stock heads gets everything really right with impeccable staging and imaging that comes with single ended triode circuits that employ no negative feedback.

The ZP3 is infinitely adjustable from RIAA to a reference NAB and beyond to IEC. As you adjust more towards the IEC calibration the ZP3 can add a mild bass boost depending on the input impedance setting for the heads ( a switch on the ZP3). This can be and is a handy tool for playback of European tapes with the IEC equalization since you effect the bass drive as well as add or subtract as much treble as you want.

From there the focus is on tubes for the ZP3, and if you want to go further, you can install aftermarket heads and at the same time have the headblock laser aligned. Getting the heads aligned perfectly is far more important than the pedigree of the heads themselves. Having both is the ideal.

When you consider the overwhelming adjustments on the OTR models a nice contrast is having a simple tube playback amplifier with nothing more than 1 switch for bass drive, and a treble control for each channel (if you want to look it that way) which gives you everything you need to instantly make any tape sound good without a bunch of confusion.

When comparing it with more expensive active equalization coming from feedback, the ZP3 creates a more believable experience by virtue of it's balance in both frequency and dynamics, but equally important in the arc of sound they reproduce. It is like a CNC machine plotting 3 dimensional space on an X Y Z grid. So precise, and so believable. Nothing is larger or smaller than it should be, nothing is more forward or more reserved than it was... it's just incredibly right. In contrast, the feedback designs sound artificially expanded where they shout at you unbalancing the harmony of the layers. On the surface for the first few minutes you would interpret it as better ( and in every bar you would interpret it as better) but for the connoisseur of perfect audio it's a pretty typical let down in so much as it gets so close to actually right, but fails to achieve.

I would like to point out to those getting into tape that reference tapes from professionals like Ed, and most of today's producers of master tapes for sale create a consistent almost standardized product. That means that NAB is NAB and IEC is IEC and 1KHz is 1KHz so it would seem there should be little need for adjustments, but if you're a tape enthusiast collecting tapes wherever you can find them from all over the world via places like ebay, you going to find that the 1K test tone can be anywhere from 940Hz to 1030Hz and the record EQ that was used, the head alignment and the bias adjustment of the deck that recorded the tape are almost as individual and fingerprints. Playback of these tapes with the ability to make all sound good, vs. the one in nine that match your machine is essential. I don't see it as an option which is why the ZP3 has infinite adjustably of the playback EQ with a single knob for each channel... because yes, the EQ on many tapes varies from channel to channel. One channel will have more highs or more bass than the other... frequently.

That's so well put Steve! To put the stock machine sound vs. a single ended tubed dedicated tape head amp in perspective... my Studer tech Roger Ginsley brought his tweaked stock Studer A810 to my place & we played one of my tapes on it then on my modified Studer A80.... he was shocked & blown away buy how much more low level detail, air, transparancy, dynamics there was from the modified deck... " sounded like a different recording..."

The biggest problem, is tape is not really a "plug & play consumer format" but Steve here has engineered a way to achieve this quite painlessly...